---
display_title: "The Post-YC Slump"
meta_title: "The post-YC slump experience from the Hyprnote founders"
meta_description: "How Hyprnote founders avoided the post-YC slump by learning to distinguish between real progress and empty momentum. On saying no, clear thinking, and focusing on what actually matters."
author: "John Jeong"
created: "2025-11-22"
published: true
coverImage: "/api/images/blog/post-yc-slump/cover.png"
---

Post-YC slump is the thing we’re trying to avoid at all cost.

<Image src="/api/images/blog/post-yc-slump/sam.jpg" alt="Post-YC Slump by Sam Altman"/>
    
(I encourage you to read [this](https://blog.samaltman.com/the-post-yc-slump) by Sam Altman.)

Over the past few weeks, my co-founder and I started using the phrase "clear thinking" almost every day.

During YC, we wanted to do everything. We talked about shipping new features, recruiting, running paid ads, spinning up creative campaigns. It felt like momentum. But it wasn’t.


The funny part is we actually avoided building a lot of those things at the very last second. And I’m so glad we did.

A few examples:

- A big product feature no one actually asked for
- A hiring push that would have created more chaos than clarity
- Paid marketing experiments we weren’t ready to track properly

All of those were seductive because they felt like progress. But they weren’t real progress.

The real work was sitting right in front of us. The product. Listening to users. Shipping the painful but important improvements.

We actually learned this the hard way. Acting fast doesn’t always mean moving forward. A lot of our regrets came from reacting too quickly, chasing noise instead of signal. That kind of movement creates liabilities more often than outcomes.

Somewhere along the way, I realized how easy it is to mistake movement for momentum. And how powerful it is to say no to protect what matters.

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